Discourses on media portrayals of immigrants and the homeland
Paper presented at ECREA’s 2nd European Communication Conference,
Barcelona 25-28 November 2008.
By
Ulrika Sjöberg ([email protected])
and
Ingegerd Rydin ([email protected])
Halmstad University
Draft: Citation only with authors’ permission
Abstract
If they were to provide an equal flow of information and promote communication among
people, the media might be seen as ideal facilitators of a living democracy. However, in
today’s media-saturated society with increased access to different media (e.g., minority,
transnational, national and local media), claims are being raised that democracy is under
threat and that multicultural civil society is tending towards fragmentation, encouraging
exclusion rather than inclusion between cultural groups. Do specific cultural readings
encourage the formation of, for example, so-called ‘media ghettos’ and/or ‘multiple
public sphericules’?
The present paper examines how media coverage of migrants and their home country is
perceived among migrant families in Sweden. Most research thus far has focused on the
media text rather than on media uses and practices. But by applying a mediaethnographic discursive approach, we have directed our attention to the migrants
themselves in order to illuminate the complex relationship between different readings of
certain media texts. Of importance is attaining knowledge about the role of the media in
migrants’ perception of Swedish society and “Swedes”, but also about how one looks at
oneself as a migrant. The study shows that there are close interconnections between
specific media readings and the perception of, for example, dominating discourses in
society related to immigration. Several key issues are discussed among the informants in
order to confirm cultural affiliations such as the search for the ‘truth’ and media
objectivity, seeking alternative portrayals of reality from transnational media (e.g., AlJazeera). Other topics raised are cultural imperialism, non-ethical Western journalism in
terms of lifestyle, values and violence, but also the need to belong to a national mediated
public sphere. The paper shows that, despite predominantly critical voices about media
coverage, media use is not only a matter of minority and diasporic media displacing local
and national media, but rather that the informants prefer to use a mixture of different
media.
Keywords: family, cultural journey, media readings, constructionism, discourse.
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Introduction
During recent years, we have seen an increased interest among media scholars in
studying the portrayal of minorities and people with migrant backgrounds, especially how
they are portrayed in newspapers and television news. These studies have revealed a
picture of negative connotations such as problems, deviance and conflict. It has also been
seen that people with migrant backgrounds are underrepresented in the media, and when
they are given a mediated space, is the content mostly concerns being a migrant and
issues dealing with immigration (see further van Dijk, 1987; Löwander, 1998; d’Haenens,
Beentjes and Bink, 2000; Brune, 2004, 2008; Madianou, 2005; ter Wal, 2002; Olausson,
2006). However, some studies also indicate an improvement, for example that news
media tend to be less stereotypical in their representations of migrants and that migrants
are given less negative roles (ter Wal, 2002). Negative (news) media portrayals of
migrants can be seen as examples of what Bourdieu (1999:11) labels symbolic violence,
which means that symbolic capital, through for example communication, is used as
means of power, which may in turn reinforce an institutional and structural form of
discrimination (Kamali, 2005). Thus, the issue of how people are represented in various
contexts, e.g. media, is of crucial importance to equality and a prerequisite for a living
democracy. It is in other words a matter of the media’s possibility to influence people’s
opinions, values and perceptions of reality.
In addition to media representations, another issue of importance is how media texts are
actually interpreted by their audience. A review by Gray (1999) on international audience
research, focusing on media readings (e.g., interpretation of TV programs), indicated a
lack of studies concerning ethnicity and race, and she criticized this research for its
‘whiteness’. However, this study is now ten years old, and the situation may have
changed. Studies from, e.g., Denmark, France, The Netherlands, the UK and the US
covering both media use and reception indicate an increasing interest in ethnic minorities
– both on the macro and micro level (e.g., Gillespie, 1995; Hargreaves and Mahjdjoub,
1997; Barker, 1999; Qureshi and Moores, 1999; Cottle, 2000; de Bruin, 2001; King and
Wood, 2001; Tufte, 2003; Madianou, 2005; Peeters and d’Haenens, 2005; Sjöberg, 2006;
De Leeuw and Rydin, 2007). In Sweden, almost ten years ago, a study was conducted by
Weibull and Wadbring (1999), which examined adult immigrants’ access to the media
and use of the media among ‘new Swedes’ in West Sweden. Furthermore, Camauër
(2003, 2005) has made reviews of the availability of print and broadcast minority media
in Sweden. Other Swedish media research has narrowed its focus to the public sphere,
while the domestic arena still is unexplored (e.g., Camauër, 2000). In other words, the
role of various media in processes such as belonging, integration and participation in
people’s daily life has received limited attention in Swedish research.
The present article looks at how media coverage is interpreted by families with
immigrant backgrounds and at what possible consequences this might have. Compared to
reception analysis, which is more oriented towards the text, so-called “primary readings”,
the article gives examples of “secondary readings” in which media are analyzed in a
specific sociocultural context, i.e. the families’ homes (Rydin, 1996).
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The project ‘Media practices in the new country’
The analysis presented here is based on results from a three-year project entitled ‘Media
practices in the new country’1, which aims to highlight the role and utilization of the
media in families (mainly with children in the ages 12-16) with an immigrant
background. Key areas to be studied and examined by the project were the role of the
media in the process of construction, reinforcement and reconstruction of identities for
families stranded between different cultures. The purpose was to examine the media as
part of the discursive everyday life of children and adults, and their significance in group
solidarity as well as citizenship objectives. In total, 75 persons took part in the project,
involving 16 families and three focus groups, in an educational setting, with origins from
countries such as Greece, Kurdistan, Iran, Lebanon, Somalia, Syria, Turkey and Vietnam.
Rather than just examining one specific ethnic group or comparing certain groups, the
project wanted to put the experience of having made a cultural journey in focus, a journey
that has often been compelled by war or political reasons. The project wanted to question
taken-for-granted group labels and move beyond them by letting the informants’ voices
be heard and by highlighting their descriptions of daily life. But at the same time, the
project did not want to ignore existing processes of objectification in society (including
media), which may affect the informants’ self-ascription. This overall theoretical point of
view has permeated the entire research process from data collection, fieldwork, and
analysis to presentation of the material. To avoid essentialist assumptions, ethnicity has
not been seen as the only explanatory factor, but rather the result of wide range of aspects
like gender, class, age, education, religion and personal experiences.
The methodological approach involved extended in-depths interviews and observations in
the families’ homes (both adults and children) as well as to some extent visual methods
like pictures taken with disposable cameras. The study implied close readings of how
media use (e.g., television, Internet, print media) was perceived and negotiated within the
private sphere of the informants’ homes. The families were approached in an inductive
way in the sense that they were given the opportunity to talk about themselves and their
perception of cultures, identities, media, etc., rather than the researchers presenting
predetermined definitions of these matters. A unique insight into the family discourse
about these issues was given, as both parents and children were interviewed, sometimes
together.
It was in the discussions about the differences between Swedish media (e.g., how these
represent people with immigrant backgrounds) and transnational media/media from the
homeland that the power of the media was stressed among the informants. In their
interview narratives, several media were mentioned such as television programs, films,
newspapers, books and advertising. As many of the participating children in the study
used media from the parents’ homeland to a limited extent due to lack of interest and
difficulties in understanding the language, it was mainly the adults who commented on
the difference between Swedish media and transnational media/media from the
homeland.
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A constructive perspective: discourse
Research on the complex interplay between text, context and reception has often been
inspired by Stuart Hall’s influential work on interpretative frameworks (1980). While the
ideological meaning of a media text is accepted in a so-called dominant-hegemonic
position, it is questioned in an oppositional code, whereas in a negotiated reading of a
text, some views are accepted and others are questioned. By bringing semiotics into the
study of communication processes, the model suggests that media meanings are produced
in social and cultural contexts, which include everything from the broader ideological
discourses in a specific society to a person’s unique personal histories, experiences and
knowledge. In applying Hall’s different types of interpretive codes, Morley (1980), in his
classical work Nationwide audience, explored how, e.g., class and ethnicity influenced
the type of readings that occurred among the viewers. That the type of genre at hand
might influence the reading outcome has been highlighted among scholars, where news is
seen as a more closed text compared to open texts like soap operas. “So I would suggest
that different genres invite different types of readings and media discourse strategies”
(Rydin, 1996: 51). While Hall’s model is oriented towards specific interpretations in
relation to certain content, his work was in turn followed by scholars who examined the
functions of media in daily life (e.g., Lull, 1980; Morley, 1986). In these studies, the
media user constituted the starting point of the research rather than the text per se. While
Hall’s model can be seen as a ‘linguistic turn’ in reception studies, the latter type of
research emphasized the need to conduct ethnographic studies (Alasuutari, 1999a). With
the aim of exploring the meanings people with immigrant backgrounds attach to various
media, and with a special focus on Swedish media and their possible consequences, the
present article is inspired by the thoughts and ideas of social constructionism and
discourse. The article takes it point of departure in what Alasuutari (1999a: 6) called the
third generation of reception studies: a constructive view: “[…] the objective is to get a
grasp of our contemporary ‘media culture’, particularly as it can be seen in the role of
the media in everyday life, both as a topic and as an activity structured by and
structuring the discourses within which it is discussed”.
Applying a constructionist perspective means that the researcher assumes that, besides
media use, technology (in this case media and its content) is a social construct and that
technology and society are inseparable, being closely interwoven and mutually dependent
on each other. Thus, media are mediated and understood through our culture as a social
process, and media on the market are received, modified and adopted by the individual’s
everyday life. The focus is turned to those social processes that shape and transform the
relations between various actors and institutions, which socially construct the
development, use and the perception of a medium among people (Bjurström et al., 2000).
In other words, (social) constructionism makes us consider both the influence of different
contexts (on micro and macro levels) and the agency of people to select, interpret, and
construct reality. The relation between the two can be characterized as a continuous
negotiation. The process and significance of socially constructed meaning-making and
interpretation have been pursued by several audience researchers as the importance of
media use in daily life has been brought to the agenda. Alasuutari (1999a) talked about
the constructive view as the third generation of audience research within cultural studies.
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A gradual shift has taken place from an interest in those mental processes through which
media content is perceived and interpreted, and its effects, to the social embeddedness of
the media user, belonging to a community with his or her interpersonal networks, all
interwoven into the process of meaning-making of media and their content. The social
construction of reality makes us acknowledge that even if the makings of meaning
involve conscious, intentional, and mental processing, social and cultural frames make
people share certain set of norms, values, and behaviors (Barlebo Wenneberg, 2001).
Given its (social) constructive perspective, a central concept in the present analysis is
discourse with a general emphasis on context; linking meaning-making processes and
media readings to issues related to power and knowledge production in society. The
concept of discourse has been given various meanings and definitions, but a common
feature is to describe discourse as a ”[…] a certain way to talk about and understand the
world” (our translation) (Winther Jørgensen and Phillips, 2000: 7). In Stuart Hall’s
interpretation of Foucualt, it is stated how a discourse ”[…] governs the way that a topic
can be meaningfully talked about and reasoned about. It also influences how ideas are
put into practice and used to regulate the conduct of others” (Hall, 1997: 44). A
dominating discourse is advocated by various dominating institutions and actors in
society and in his fieldwork in segregated Southall in London, Baumann (1996: 192)
stated that this discourse ”For so-called immigrants and ethnic minorities, it represents
the currency within which they must deal with the political and media establishments on
both the national and the local level. [...]. The dominant discourse represents the
hegemonic language within which Southallians must explain themselves and legitimate
their claims”. Various prominent discourses float between various spheres on both the
macro and micro level, and in his work Fairclough (1989: 25) distinguished between
three interrelated levels of social conditions in which discourses are found: the society as
a whole (e.g., laws, ideology, culture, religion, political system, our examples), social
institutions (e.g., media companies) and social situation (e.g., media use in families,
media representations). To Foucault, it is of less value to prove the truth of a discourse;
instead the focus should be on exploring whether a discourse is perceived as true and its
actual consequences. Foucault talked about the ’regime of truth’. ”Each society has its
regime of truth, its ’general politics’ of truth; that is, the types of discourse which it
accepts and makes function as true, the mechanisms and instances which enable one to
distinguish true and false statements [...] (Foucault, 1980: 131)
The applied constructionist and discursive perspective not only have implications for the
present analysis, but also for how the interview situation per se is perceived. According to
Bernstein (1983), truth is created through dialogues within a certain discourse. Truth and
knowledge are constructed in a social context and by people’s different frames of
references. Advocating the discursive construction on interview talks, Dickerson (1996:
60) noted “[…] interviews could be read as entailing live dialogic activity rather than
purely reading off from some fixed, separate, preformed mental image”. A similar line of
thought was expressed by Storm-Mathisen and Helle-Valle (2008: 64), who criticized
academic reasoning that makes inference from, e.g., interview data to a reality outside the
specific research situation: “[…] they neglect analyzing statements as the linguistic,
5
discursive acts they actually are”. Thus, utterances made during an interview not only
refer to dominating discourses on the macro and micro level, but also to the interview in
itself. Thus, the talks are not merely the result of certain interpretations of media texts,
but also of how the informants position themselves in relation to the interviewer/
researcher with a Swedish background and the interview context. There were, for
example, occasions when the discourse “we and them”, which was also seen when
discussing Swedish media, was evident in the talks, such as when the interviewer was
labeled as “you Swedes”. That we use language differently in various contexts (here the
interview context) is seen, for example, in Bakhtin’s work (1986: 60) on ‘speech genre’.
The interview context in the project may also have had the opposite affect, giving the
impression that the informants were not immigrants and wanted to be perceived as
Swedes, without any experiences of racism and discrimination. This might represent what
Billig (1992) calls ‘moral methodologies’ and impressionability, that is, how the
interviewee constructed a view based on “how things should be – the norm”. The latter
case is of course much more difficult to discern, and it is difficult to analyze its influence
on the interview talk.
“Immigrants are all the same”: to generalize
According to the informants in the project media, television in particular not only
influences how immigrants look at themselves, Swedish society and Swedes, but also
how Swedish people perceive immigrants. The representation of society in the media has
a counter-productive effect, obstructing a dialogue and an understanding between
different ethnic groups. That media have the power to influence society and its
inhabitants, thereby enforcing existing discrimination and racism in society, was a wellknown fact for the informants. One topic that was intensively discussed among the Arab
families was that Swedish news and films portray Muslims as terrorists and always take
the side of Israel. In their coverage, the media contribute to essentialism, in that all
persons with an immigrant background are placed in the category ‘immigrant’. Brune
(2008: 349) states how these generalizations take place through various routines among
journalists which ”[...] ”together give shape to a kind of ”comprehensible immigrant”, an
intellectual construction that lives a life of its own beside real people and circumstances”
(our translation).
- I think Sweden on TV mostly shows the negative things about immigrants. It doesn’t matter they come
from which land but it’s a bit discrimination and it can also negative affect people, Swedish too, then they
maybe think everybody’s like that. It’s not true, everybody’s not the same. (Man)
The term ’immigrant’ is increasingly being called into question, and it has been stressed
that media companies, authorities, politicians, researchers, etc., must move beyond this
concept and instead place issues like racism, discrimination, ethnic relations and
citizenship on the agenda2 (see, e.g., Brune, 2008; Darvishpour and Westin, 2008). “In
the concept of immigrant, as it has come to be used in Sweden, social exclusion is built
in. In one sense, being an immigrant means being non-Swedish, in a deeper sense, it
means being nobody “ (our translation) (Darvishpour and Westin, 2008: 16). In the talks
6
about the media portrayal of immigrants, the term was reflected upon and the informants
asked what it takes not to be labeled as an immigrant:
- I want to say well when we watched TV, news about somebody for some crime or something they say
“okay, he’s an immigrant” or well or but many of them, they’re born here, maybe they have an immigrant
background say grandma or grandpa, doesn’t matter. They came 30, 40 years ago here in Sweden like,
many are born here so why do they say “immigrants do this or immigrants don’t do that” if they’re born
here, they’re citizens and everything but just because they have different names or something so well
maybe I react this way because I think that if somebody is born in a country and is a citizen then he belongs
to that country, not a foreigner or. (Woman)
The informants’ discussions on the power of media reflect the classical theory of
cultivation, where television is responsible for the creation of a selective world image,
which in turn affects viewers’ beliefs and values (Gerbner, 1967). Morley (1999: 144)
agreed: “Thus the norms of that ‘television world’ […] naturally come to define, for
many people, the basic contours of how it really is, out there in the big wide world,
beyond their immediate personal experience”. The notion that media coverage of
immigrants (especially Muslims) affects Swedish people’s experiences and attitudes is
supported by Hvitfel (1998), as few Swedes have had personal experiences of Islam as a
religion. Especially Arab families emphasized their dissatisfaction with Swedish media
and had thought about these issues extensively. This critical awareness is not surprising,
as it was also these families who talked a great deal about racism and how Muslims are
discriminated against on a daily basis. There is, in other words, an evident link between
the amount of experienced or conceivable racism/discrimination in Swedish society and
the type of interpretation made when using Swedish media (cf. Al-Ghabban, 2007).
Relating to Hall’s research on various reading positions, we can see examples here of socalled oppositional reading, where the “reader” dismisses the dominating ideology, which
according to Hall is always inscribed in a media text and constitutes the sender’s
intentional reading. In the project, examples were also seen of what Hall called the
dominating position, where informants were of the opinion that there were no differences
between different media in terms of the news; it is the same structure and misery, but for
example a television program from the homeland had longer news and provided detailed
information about the country:
Now you watch both Swedish and Vietnamese news, is there a difference between them?
- Almost the same like they always start by saying what happened in the country, then comes the whole
world, and then sports and last it’s the weather. (Man)
A mother and father in one family talked about how the racism in Swedish society was
also found in the media, creating an image of Muslims as a homogenous group with only
negative features:
But I mean just concerning the news and the media.
Father- Some mass media they don’t work for peace you see they work more for segregation than for
integration. I’m talking, I hope you don’t misunderstand me, I’m not talking about Swedes, I’m talking you
7
know part of society goes by the mass media, right, and there are many who’ve met before they were so
kind and nice, but today they’re completely different.
[...]
But have you noticed that racism has increased in everyday life?
Father- It’s everywhere.
Mother- Has increased.
Daily?
Father- It’s daily. There’s both you know. If we say in X (the city the family lives in) then there’s a lot and
we’ve noticed it recently there’s a lot in the mass media you know.
Right.
Father- Again I can say like we’re here in Sweden but we don’t live like the Swedish society, we live what
George Bush says, what the US says about the world, about Muslims, Arabs and terrorists. We live with the
mass media today, unfortunately.
With that image you mean?
Father- With that image right and as soon as somebody does here in X or something then identifies that
person “that one’s a Muslim or he’s an Arab”, identifies the person you know, the Arab, the Muslim.
The 14-year-old son in the family agreed with his parents, stating that it has become a
popular style worldwide to perceive all Muslims as terrorists:
What you just said, is it the news that gives the wrong picture?
- Yeah, it usually gives the wrong picture, for example, well like now it’s like the style, like wearing jeans,
so it’s just like what Papa said that George Bush said “now Arabs and Muslims are terrorists” so it’s
become the style over the whole world that like, well Arabs and Muslims are terrorists. You could say it’s
become a style.
According to the family, Western media express the present, dominating American
(cultural, political) imperialism in society. The power of the media is strong, as the
family felt the media have contributed to an anti-Muslim and xenophobic discourse in
which all Muslims are seen as terrorists after September 11. The family’s line of
argument can be related to van Dijk’s research (1988) on how news as discourse
reproduces existing and dominating structures and concepts in society. Thus, maintaining
a “we-them” discourse. That media generalize and treat all immigrants the same was also
mentioned by the children. ” “Yes for instance the news, they say like “all black
children” you know, “aren’t good for the school, blah, blah, blah” (14-year-old girl).
One mother continued the discussion on the power of the media and on how Swedish
media disfavored people with immigrant backgrounds. Every time a major crime takes
place, she fears the news coverage. If an immigrant is put forward as guilty, all people
with immigrant backgrounds are affected:
Yes, I understand. Several people have said that. Is there anything else you react to like if there are too few
immigrants on TV or how immigrants are portrayed in newspapers, on the news…
-Well, if there’s, you hear it if something’s going on like a murder or something so they think “it’s an
immigrant that’s done it” until it’s proven that it wasn’t an immigrant, if it wasn’t an immigrant, ohh, we
can relax. (Woman)
Statements were also made about journalists’ eagerness to find something sensational,
and owing to their lack of knowledge of how things really are, a biased and
discriminatory image of immigrants is given. In the interviews, it was mentioned how the
8
discourse “we and them” marks the media content, which in turn leads to triviality,
generalization and othering. There is a lack of knowledge among journalist (and Swedes
in general) about, for instance, Islam and actual living conditions among Muslim
families:
- […] I’ve never reacted, before this I haven’t reacted afterwards I started to react a lot to documentaries
like that. There was, when an immigrant group came from, I don’t know which country it was, now I don’t
remember at all, oh well, so they took them up to Kiruna I think it was because there was more room there,
empty apartments and then they showed interviews with the staff helping this group when they arrived and
they said “we had to teach them how to wash themselves, how to do the dishes, how to use dish soap” I just
held my head and thought “My God, are there cleaner people than those who live down there.” I mean
we’re not living in the Stone Age, not even down there (Woman).
Poverty, ways of living and violence
Besides the fact that the Swedish media, including their readers and viewers, generalize
and perceive immigrants as a homogenous group, the informants talked about how the
media gave incorrect and negative portrayals of the reality in, for example, the Middle
East and Africa, which in turn affected Swedish people:
- You know this picture they give not the mass media this Swedish people this mass media it plays a big
role but sometimes it plays negative role when it comes to reality in the Middle East […]. […] They
(Swedes) think that they (Palestinians) are barbaric they don’t have anything to, they just think “kill
people” you know, it’s not like that for example they don’t give this picture in reality, why should people
do this, they will sacrifice their life for their country. Swedes never understand this, they’ll never
understand it because it’s something that’s a part of these, you know, and the mass media they “well, it’s
the terrorists, look what they do, five poor Israelis have died” but how many Palestinians have died on the
other side. (Man)
During the interviews, it was stressed how images from the informants’ homelands only
present poverty and misery. A mother and her 20-year-old daughter were tired of the
Swedish media, which only show ugly and repulsive pictures from their homeland:
Do you think the Swedish news presents for instance the Middle East in a certain way?
Mother- Yes, they do. They only show disgusting and ugly pictures from there and when it’s about another
country then they show pretty pictures, nice areas, pleasant news. They do, they do.
Can you give an example, something more concrete?
Mother- I don’t remember any concrete thing but it’s like that, I’ve had that feeling many times on different
occasions. If they want to talk about Syria, you know, then they show a donkey or a poor man sitting on the
street or something similar.
Daughter- Poor houses…
Poor houses.
Daughter- I mean the areas themselves.
Mother- But when they talk about another country then you see the nice streets. We have nice streets too of
course, nice houses in Damascus but they don’t film them.
Because that’s the picture we get to see…
Mother- Yes, exactly. (Mother and daughter)
9
During the talks, movies were also brought up. The informants told about how they were
offended when actors with immigrant backgrounds usually played the owner of a pizza
place, that their accents were made fun of, instead of showing successful immigrants with
positive features. In addition, the type of films broadcasted on Swedish television was
seen as problematic: “They’ve chosen from all the films, the really nice pictures that
exist, they’ve chosen the one that really sick, or…” (Woman) Two sisters mentioned how
their mother did not want them to watch television programs that said bad things about
immigrants. They themselves said that posters and advertising in public places were
racist, as they always showed a dying and skinny colored person:
Sister 1: They shouldn’t just show black people. They’ve never shown a white person who’s dying. There
are white people with anorexia. As you know, they’re in their own world. They get food and everything,
but they don’t eat, they have anorexia. And like the ones who are poor. They don’t show you like that.
They show blacks. Then you feel like a racist, you know.
[...]
Sister 2: Yeah like ads on TV, it’s usually a picture like that with a mother and her small child. The kid’s
covered with flies around its head and all. And you know, there aren’t only colored people who are poor
and need help. There are white people too. Who also need help, who aren’t so rich and all. But they, you
know in films like that and all, it’s always colored people. I’ve like never seen that there …
(Two sisters in the ages 12 and 14 years old)
Besides the fact that one’s homeland was portrayed as poor and miserable, another topic
among the adult informants was the Western way of living (its norms and values) shown
on Swedish television, which did not provide their children with a good role model.
“Basic to the formation of values is that people tend to hold on to the familiar, to an
already given environment and type of life they are used to. Values are one part of
personal identity” (our translation) (Daun, 1994: 29). These talks about way of living
exemplify what Alasuutari (1999b: 98) has come to call ethical realism, where media
content is evaluated according to the extent to which it provides proper ethical models of
life. For example, in the interviews, it was stated how the Swedish woman was
discriminated against in ads:
Do you think there’s a difference, I mean Swedish…
- Yes, not just a little there’s a big difference. On Arab channels for example, sorry, for example they don’t
show sex, well, but unfortunately on Swedish channels they show.
There’s too much nakedness…
Yes, exactly nakedness, everything. I want to tell you one thing the first to us is religion. […] Religion and
tradition it’s almost the same in that way anyway especially on this situation. In our Islam it’s forbidden for
instance that I see her when she’s naked, looking at her is forbidden. (Woman)
Similar discussions on ways of living and how women are portrayed in the media did not
take place among the young informants. It was obvious that parents and children did not
always share the same opinion on what constituted a good program. The statement
“that’s nothing for you” got the reply “but all young people watch it so why not me”. That
media, especially series and soaps, are integrated into young people’s daily youth culture,
in the shaping of social relations and identity work, has received considerable attention
among media researchers (e.g., Sjöberg, 2002; Suoninen, 2001). A mother described how
she tried to make her 14-year-old daughter watch television programs with educational
10
content or programs from her parents’ homeland rather than series filled with violence
and sex:
Okay, interior design, Finally Home and… (programs the mother likes)
-Yes, I like that one a lot but not those series. I don’t like because they show that series on young people,
White Lies, and I watched a couple times “no, Christina, that’s nothing for you to watch”. It’s not good role
models you know, they fought, they drank, they got divorced, married, what role model?
So you don’t want her to watch that?
No, I don’t. They have another program Educational TV but they show in the middle of the day or late in
the evening but that’s good for children and they don’t show it. They show something about sex, about
everything imaginable, they don’t do anything but sex, sex, sex. What will become of those children, what
will they, they’ll go nuts, sex in films, sex on TV, sex on the radio, sex, sex. Don’t they have anything else
to show.
Do you think this is specific to Swedish TV channels or is it also true of Greek TV channels?
They don’t show, I don’t know we don’t have the Greek channels. (Woman)
Even if it was critical voices that dominated the interviews, there were also discussions
about the positive aspects of Swedish media compared to media in the homeland:
Swedish media content is less violent, which of course is related to the often violent
situation in the homeland, something the parents saw as a problem for their children. The
increased interest in sensational news, where violence, criminality and scandals are
brought to the fore, is seen as the outcome of the accelerating commercialization trend in
the media arena (Dahlgren, 1995; Sparks and Tulloch, 2000). The violence in the media
resulted in an ambivalent relation to the decision of whether or not to watch news from
the homeland. Words such as “stressful, are forced to, difficult decision, must watch”
were expressed to describe this ambivalence. These contradictory feelings about
television viewing have also been found in other studies (e.g. Hagen, 1994) and are a
matter that deserves more attention from media scholars. On the one hand, the informants
in the project had a need to know what was happening in their homeland, but on the other
hand, the media content could be perceived as violent and highly stressful. Thus, a
“struggle” seemed to be taking place between the wish to be an informed citizen and the
emotional stress evoked by the violent content. These ambivalent feelings towards violent
media content have been the research interest of Höijer (1998: 77), who noted “The
meeting between the private and social lives of the viewers and the reports about
seemingly inconceivable violence showing corpses and injured victims, give rise to many
dilemmas with their conflicting feelings and thoughts”. Two women in the project discuss
these matters below:
-Foreign news, but we’ve mostly listened to Arab news, not me, Arab news is stressful for me. But they
also reflex reality, but in a way that makes you sick, really. That’s why I don’t listen so much, but my
husband he usually listens to it, and I have to…
Does it go too fast, do you think? You said stressful?
-Yes, stressful, those you, you see pictures of people being killed or cut, or blood and children, or, a lot of
things and it makes you sick when you look at pictures like that
[…]
- But you get upset and the children too. But I feel, I decide I close the TV. You want to know what’s
happening.
Yes, I understand
- It is big or hard decision if we want to know, if we want to see or not. (Woman)
Do you think that’s okay, or what do you think?
11
-It’s okay the way they (Swedish TV) don’t show pictures like that, bloody pictures and people who are
killed as punishment and such, but our channel shows everything.
They show everything.
-It’s hard for the children.
So you think children should be protected, you have pretty much the same idea,
-It’s children we’ve seen in our country too. It’s for their sake. They get a bit surprised, yes.
What do they say?
-No, usually don’t let them watch. Children aren’t interested in news, only adults. I usually watch and my
husband too. But sometimes I’ve decided not to watch the news, but maybe miss something, I have to
watch. (Woman)
Another example was provided by a father (Kurdistan, Iran) whose daughter became
upset when watching the satellite channel Kurdsat; he did not want her to see this violent
mediated image of the homeland any longer:
- If my child is sitting in front of in front of the TV channel and is going to watch Kurdsat but it’s going to
show for example Saddam Hussain’s attack on the Kurds then she gets sad because she’s never seen such.
Once we sat here, my nephew was here and they showed some films of the Kurds and Saddam Hussain’s
attack in Kurdistan, she started crying right away. Since that day now I’ve decided, when they show
something I switch channels because I don’t want, I want, I try to explain to my child, what’s happened to
the Kurds, but not this way. (Man)
Instead of letting children watch news about war from the homeland, one interviewed
family preferred that their children listen and dance to Arab music, in this way taking part
in their parents’ culture:
Father- But it’s just music, I think it’s only the music they’ve listen to or for example sometimes they’ve
given a party or with the family they’ve danced a little, tried Arab dancing but not news, not programs like
Arab programs, or politics or other information. I don’t think so…
Mother- Not in Swedish either…
No, not children of that age…
Father- No, they don’t have interest in Arab news or anything. We don’t want them to listen to Arab news,
it’s always bad news, always. War here, war there. It’s better if they listen to Arab music, they have mixed,
they sit together. (Woman and man)
The power of (national) media to generalize, to give selective coverage, and the lack of
news from the homeland in the Swedish media caused the informants to turn to other
news sources, for example, Al-Jazeera, which we will look at in more detail below.
12
Alternative images: Al-Jazeera
Even if freedom of expression in Sweden was highly valued, that every person can
express his or her opinions without risking prison, it was crucial to the adult informants to
find out what is actually happening in the homeland.“There’s not much foreign news in
Hallandsposten and other newspapers and so we have to watch our own channel,
because we can’t find any other way” (woman). Thus, watching news and other
programs on one’s “own” channels can be a forced choice owing to the lack of
information about the homeland in the Swedish media. The fact that the informants
wanted diverse coverage of foreign news and news from the homeland made
transnational satellite channels such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya important information
sources. Similar results have been seen in other studies. ”Western TV networks assume
that Americans and Canadians are simply not interested; as a result, events in the region
(Middle East) are not covered in detail” (El-Nawawy and Iskandar, 2003: 12). In the
project ‘Media practices in the new country’, some informants meant that Al-Jazeera
gave the true image of reality and that the people portrayed on the channel shared the
same religion and nationality, but some also took a critical stand on these types of
channels. Irrespective of the experienced reliability, the informants all agreed about the
need to make use of different types of media, including Swedish, national, international
as well as media from the homeland:
But do you think that these racist elements in some news programs cause people to watch the Arab TV
channels more, that they almost stop watching the Swedish news?
Mother- No.
Father- That’s not what we do.
Mother- We interested very much in watching the news on Swedish TV, almost 24 hours it plays. Swedish
channels, not Arab channels, that I just like to watch sometimes, I have a Lebanese channel I like to
watch…(Man and woman)
- I don’t do that. My children don’t watch Al-Jazira so much, but we do. Except like I said, you read, you
hear, they’re good at fast, they’re fast and direct comments and debates, but like I said I listen to other
channels too. I also read on Internet, from different directions and places. I do that and my husband too and
then I can put together a picture. (Woman)
Thus, different media fulfill different functions and thereby complement rather than
replace each other, a finding also presented in previous research: ”Evidence taken from
recent research suggests that minority audiences desire far more mixed representation
and manifest quite mixed-up usage, leading to a ’not only but also’ approach to the study
of minority identity positions and media use” (Sreberny, 2005: 443, see also Hargreaves
and Mahdjoub, 1997; Georgiou, 2005; Madianou, 2005; Peeters and d’Haenens, 2005;
Al-Ghabban, 2007). In order to explain the complex relation between different media,
their production, distribution and consumption, Adoni (1985) distinguished between
functional equivalence and functional differentiation of the media. The more similar the
functions being fulfilled by, for example, two media, the greater possibility that one of
the media will be displaced. The opposite is seen when media have (partly) different
functions for the user and thereby complement each other.
13
That Al-Jazeera has a special position in the news landscape is seen in talks about how
the channel, since it started in 1996, has a crucial role in criticizing and scrutinizing
established social, cultural and political actors and institutions, not only in the Arab
countries but also worldwide (cf. El-Nawawy and Iskandar, 2002; Lamloum, 2006). AlJazeera is the most popular Arab channel, and its success among its audience can mainly
be explained by its coverage of the conflict between Palestine and Israel, the war in
Afghanistan and the war against terrorism (Lamloum, 2006:30). Among the informants in
the project, the fact that the channel reports directly from a specific country and that
comments are given by ordinary people on the streets was seen as evidence of the
channel’s great reliability. Reliability is a key factor in whether or not viewers will
identify with the media content (Auter, Arafa and Al-Jaber, 2005). Once again, the
possibility to identify oneself with the content, newsreaders and journalists was stressed;
it is important to feel familiarity, to feel sympathy, to find out what is happening with
friends and relatives. Hermes (1999: 74) noted: “Seeing media figures as real and as part
of our everyday cultural and emotional experience is part and parcel of how media texts
come to have meaning”.
A channel like Al-Jazeera becomes important in a society that is experienced as
discriminating and where day-to-day racism is a reality “Al-Jazira expresses, produces
conceptions and strengthens the identity of the audience the channel targets. It accounts
for this public’s demands, aspirations and frustrations, for its real or imagined
perceptions of external threats” (our translation) (Lamloum, 2006: 55). Besides news,
these types of channels offer debate programs in which current topics of conversation are
discussed (El-Nawawy and Iskandar, 2002), something that, according to the informants
in the project, is lacking in Swedish media. In the interviews among Arab families,
statements were made about how channels such as Al-Jazeera showed the truth – “the
other side”:
Al-Jazira and Al-Arabiya is there a difference between these two channels?
-No it, it’s just competition between them you could say. But Al-Jazira is the first channel that has begun
for every uh you know that has broadcast uh war...
With Iraq or what?
-No, I mean uh they broadcast the truth always the truth.
The truth.
-Yes, no mistakes or such. You believe in it, in it more than in Arabiya. [...].
Always uncover because it’s people who talk directly and say “this has happened to us” this and that. Why
we lie and such, you listen to it. (Man).
-It sees the truth Al-Jazira, and the naked truth. If people here don’t care so much that they don’t want to
see the whole truth.
You mean the other channels?
-I mean here, the public doesn’t want to see the truth. They don’t want to see death for example or they
want, we get to see them, we get to suffer with them. When you for example read sometimes in HD, I don’t
know if you’ve seen it, it was big news that talked about that Israel, how many houses were pushed down,
but we got to see the pictures, we got to see the children who lived outside, the girls crying, we got to see
the blood running on the floor so when you read about it on the newspaper it’s not exactly like when we see
it right.
[...]
14
But then you mean that Al-Jazira gives the correct picture?
-Yes, exactly and the difference is that here in Al-Jazira for example we wouldn’t watch Al-Jazira if it was
exactly like the other channels because we want to see what’s happening with our relatives but here in
Sweden nobody cares if well if you see a lot about Israel or about Palestine [...]. (Woman)
Despite critical voices describing Swedish media coverage, and reports that other media
from the homeland or transnational media are important sources of information on the
homeland and international events, Swedish media were also used. The informants
discussed how Swedish television could be improved so as to encourage participation and
involvement in society and increase an understanding of the multicultural among both
“Swedes” and people with immigrant backgrounds, a matter to which we will turn our
attention in the following section.
”Wise TV channels”: programs for, about and with immigrants
The phrase”wise TV channels” was uttered by one of the informants. It summarizes both
young and adult informants’ wish that Swedish media, especially television, would
contain more topics and deal with questions that engage people with immigrant
backgrounds and that shed light on their situation. They also requested that more
immigrants would take part in various programs. Similar discussions were presented by
Beckman (2003), who noted that immigrants’ views on issues that involve them are
absent in the news coverage. The fact that the news applies a ”Swedish” perspective does
not encourage people to get actively involved in different societal issues (cf. Sandström,
2005). In this context, Madianou (2005) talked about how the media create symbolic
exclusion.
Do you think it’s good what they show about immigrants on TV?
-Hm... There aren’t very many channels that show about immigrants. There aren’t many that do, actually.
Channels that show? Are the programs mostly in Swedish?
- Yeah... Like channels that show how it is in Somalia, I want channels like that (14-year-old boy).
While discussing Swedish media in the interviews, the informants usually brought up
Swedish public television, which is especially interesting considering that it, as a public
service organization, shall “[...] provide a diversified selection that reflects the different
cultures existing in Sweden” (our translation) (Sveriges Televisions public
serviceredovisning 2005:54). In the document, it is stated that television programs shall
mirror a multicultural Sweden, consisting of people with various ethnic and cultural
backgrounds as well as religious beliefs and experiences. According to Swedish
Television (SVT), the number of participants with roots in different cultures and religions
has increased in all types of programs compared to previous years. Some of the examples
given (during the period when the study was conducted) are Orka! Orka!, Lasermannen,
Före stormen, Det nya landet, Sju soffor i Tensta, Hej till hela Sverige (Sveriges
Televisions public service-redovisning 2005).
15
Olausson (2006: 310) was of the opinion that national media in a pluralistic democracy
“[...] should serve as discursive bridges for dissident voices and communities” (our
translation). Even international media research emphasizes the need for national media
to reflect the multicultural nature of society and that people with immigrant backgrounds
should not only be media users, but also media producers (Sreberny, 2005: 447).
According to the informants in the project, many more programs must be produced that
encourage viewers/listeners to take part in societal events, as opposed to programs that
contribute to alienation. This can be achieved not only by directing specific programs to
people with an immigrant background, but also by increasing knowledge and
understanding of today’s multicultural Sweden among the entire population. One father
in the project noted that there is a great danger associated with the fact that immigrants do
not get enough information during elections due to their lack of language skills:
- Get this, many immigrants in the latest municipal and parliamentary election voted for wrong – Sweden
Democrats. They thought they’d voted for the Social Democrats (laughs). You know, there’s a difference
between the Sweden Democrats and the Social Democrats. Since there were no channels, there was nothing
to teach people, who voted for a really dangerous organization against immigrants. [...]. They have to try to
explain much more about the society. (Man)
While talking about the responsibility of Swedish media to inform about various social
and political events, the informants also stated that the media from the homeland must
offer more programs that encourage integration in the host country. The father above
continued and told us how one series on the satellite channel Kurdsat portrays Kurds
living in Europe and their daily life there:
-For example now serial channels, for example this serial program or films are mostly about immigration
from Kurdistan to Turkish countries.
Is this a series on TV?
- Yes, series on TV. About what, how has happened, what has happened to them. Not documents but they
have played a role for example like a person in Kurdistan who lives well I come from Kurdistan to Turkey
and then to Italy and then to Spain and what’s happened with me now. (Man)
Despite the fact that there is a need for more targeted programs in Swedish television, this
may be problematic. According to the informants, the division between Swedish and
immigrant programs could serve to strengthen existing segregation in society. The
programs must instead have more multicultural features and be directed to a wider
audience:
- But I mean that’s also a mistake. There isn’t so much difference between immigrant and Swedish children
and there is also a problem. Then you have to have a broadcast that’s together, immigrant kids and Swedish
kids, so you have one picture from them (Woman).
When the present fieldwork was being conducted, the Swedish series Kniven i mitt hjärta
(The knife in my heart) was running on Swedish public television, and this was a type of
program that the informants (both children and adults) would like to see more of. Several
aspects were mentioned that made the series popular, and once again its popularity was
due to its portrayal of reality and the possibility to identify oneself with the content. The
16
film has an inner perspective in which the real-life situations and conditions of people
with immigrant backgrounds are portrayed seriously and authentically, thus inviting
viewers to participate and get involved in the content:
What makes them good?
Son- They’re funny, young people so you see them like they make it real that’s what they mean, it’s like
that sometimes too.
Daughter- I mean about foreigners, it’s fun to watch to watch because they like they’re more the kinds fight
and stuff, it’s fun to watch how they play.
Son- It’s like they’ve been criminals like that and fight and all in gang fights and you know and then they
make a film about what they’ve gone through and then and then they show how it works and stuff.
[…]
What makes the series so good?
Mother- We like we I follow it, when I’ve watched it, it was the first time like I recognized a lot from my
oldest son because he was a bit involved in the whole thing so I recognized certain parts when they showed
like that “oh, I recognize that part because my son has done the same thing” sort of.
So it may be that even parents watch it?
Mother- Yeah, I think there are a lot of parents who watch it.
Because the film also includes things about parents, exclusion, “nobody listens to me”...
Mother- Right, exactly. That’s important. I think lots of parents watch it.
(Mother with two children)
Thus, their ability to identify with the content explains the popularity of the series among
the informants, and it is this lack of identification with Swedish media output in general
that made them use other sources of information, such as satellite channels and the
Internet. The series portrays the brutal reality of life for immigrant youth and their
families in a suburb outside Stockholm, and many parallels were drawn to the viewers’
own personal experiences. This type of identification (cf. Livingstone, 1998; Gauntlett
and Hill, 1999) was also discernible when the informants watched, for instance, news
from the homeland, and one precondition for such identification with content is that
Swedish programs, to a much greater extent, show programs produced by, for and about
people with immigrant backgrounds. To use Hall’s expression, a lack of equivalence is
seen in the communicative exchange in relation to a specific content and its lack of
meaningfulness to the “reader”. “Before this message can have an ‘effect’ (however
defined), satisfy a ‘need’ or be put to a ‘use’, it must first be appropriated as a
meaningful discourse and be meaningfully decoded” (Hall, 1980: 130). Media research
has especially examined the importance of soaps among viewers by constituting frames
of meaning for everyday life, such as personal relations and family life (cf. Buckingham,
1996; Silverstone, 1994; Sjöberg, 2002). In their work, Barker and Andre (1996)
distinguished between whether a viewer thinks something can happen in real life or not
and the extent to which a program can be related to the viewer’s own life and personal
experiences. These two types of understandings of the realism of programs - naturalism
and emotional realism – have also been noted by Ang (1985) in her classical study of the
soap opera Dallas. According to the informants in our study, increased interest would be
directed towards Swedish television if more people with immigrant backgrounds
participated in the programs. This did not only involve series, but also films and music
programs like Idol:
17
-It’s also different groups. Now for example you know, you said it too, Arab groups mostly watch
documentaries from other countries and the news. When the news is over they change channels to the
satellite, but when for example Idol comes, I promise that 100% watch it. Why. Because it’s a pure music
program and there are many immigrants on that program. Now there’s a Kurd, for example.
So it doesn’t need to be in different languages?
- No, I don’t mean that that it should be in different languages. It can be in it’s really good that everything
is Swedish. Because you can’t have a national TV in different languages, that’s a bit difficult. This is more
about immigrants, it influences really good on immigrant groups I’m sure about it. (Man)
There are other examples of viewer identification with certain media content. The ability
to recognize places and current societal issues is a decisive factor, and this was also seen
in discussions of how the informants enjoyed watching documentaries from their
homeland on Swedish television:
What is it like for you then?
-We only have Swedish programs. We don’t have a parabolic disc or satellite. The whole time we watch
Swedish programs.
What do you think about that? If you compare with Bosnian TV?
-It’s easier to understand on Bosnian. But it doesn’t matter. I can understand on TV too. Yesterday we saw
Bosnia on TV3 about...
About orphanages, SOS children’s villages.
-I understand everything they talked about and I know about it and I lived there. (Woman).
Discursive identifications
As discussed initially in the present paper, Swedish media research has generally focused
on representations of migration, refugees, racism and xenophobia (Brune, 2004). Here,
we have instead showed how media reports on these issues are interpreted and perceived
by individuals with a migration background. We have seen how the media are conceived
of as creating and reproducing discourses of “the immigrant” and how the media are
reinforcing the concept of “othering”, thus implying a “we and them” relationship. It is
intrinsic to media logic to dichotomize and draw lines in black and white. The informants
also developed their ideas about how to improve journalism in this respect, by asking for
more focus on important and relevant issues for migrant citizens, rather than making
programs from the perspective of the majority population.
This paper has emphasized the informants’ identifications with media texts and what
meaning the texts are assigned. The discourses deal with all kinds of recognitions and
emotional attachments to media images and reportages, e.g. recognition of physical
places from the former homeland. Media play a crucial role in our daily life and are part
of our overall ‘map’, which is used to navigate in day-to-day activities (Alasuutari,
1999b). An important question in this context concerns how people position themselves
(cf. Hall, 1997) in relation to the various public discourses they face in their encounters
with the media and in society in general. What are the consequences for their selfperception, their views on “the Swede” and on the society in which they live? The media
are perceived as a discursive power apparatus, which originates from journalistic
practices and such mechanisms as generalization, dichotomization, “othering” and
trivialization (cf. Kamali, 2005). It was Arab families in particular that reflected on these
18
issues, and they particularly referred to increased everyday racism and discrimination in
the aftermath of September 11.
What kinds of views did they have more explicitly? One view was that immigrants were
treated as a homogeneous group, often with problematic backgrounds and experiences,
which they mean creates negative associations with the concept of “immigrants”. They
explicitly mentioned that immigrants are associated with criminality. They also objected
to the image of their home countries. Swedish reportages often focus on poverty and the
negative sides of their country. Another objection among people from the Middle East
was that the Swedish media tend to stand up for Israel. The informants were convinced
that such images contributed to Swedish people’s views about and attitudes towards
migrants from the Middle East, in the long run causing racism and discrimination. In
other words, the media stir up xenophobia. Swedish journalists were accused of being
uninformed about the real conditions. Instead they reported sensational news.
We clearly cannot know the exact consequences of such media representations for
migrants’ self-perceptions and views about Swedish society, but one cannot neglect such
statements either.
The concept of identity has been given different meanings over the years, but it is most
often suggested that we should regard identity from a relational and contextual
perspective. Robins and Morley (1995) started from Saussure and his theory of language,
which is based on differences. Robins and Morley argued that this same principle should
be applied in the analysis of cultural identities. Rather than analyzing cultural or
(national) identities one at a time, they are constituted in and through their relations to
one another. In other words, according to them, it is inappropriate to start by trying to
define “European culture” and then discover its relations to other cultural identities.
Rather, European culture is constituted precisely through its distinctions from and
oppositions to American culture, Asian culture, etc. Thus, difference is constitutive of
identity. Robins and Morley referred to Schlesinger in this discussion, who wrote the
following: “Identity is as much about exclusion as it is about inclusion, and the critical
factor for defining the ethnic group therefore becomes the social boundary which defines
the group with respect to other groups…not the cultural reality within those borders“
(from Schlesinger, 1987: 235). And as Madiano (2005: 528) stated much later:”I
examined the shifts in people’s discourses, i.e. why they would identify themselves in
certain ways in certain (mediated and unmediated) contexts. […] This interpretation
indicates the fluidity and social construction of categories such as ethnicity and highlights
the divisions within the minorities.”
These thoughts are not new and hark back to symbolic interactionism and the view that
individuals develop in interaction with others. As exposure to media portrayals is a social
encounter, one can expect that migrants and minorities will develop and shape their selfrepresentations and identities also partly based on the media. In other words, in media
readings, they position themselves in relation to how migrants and minorities are
portrayed and mediated in migrant discourses. As we have seen above, they often have
oppositional readings (Hall, 1980) of the output in Western media representations
(Sweden in this particular case).
19
The present paper has also referred to how informants emphasized various kinds of
media, not only Swedish, but global media and transnational media from their home
countries, e.g. satellite television or music videos downloaded from the Internet.
Transnational media seemed to be very important, as the informants stressed the
usefulness of local information. Swedish news media were not conceived of as
particularly alert in picking up news that could be relevant to minority groups, not even
the public service channels.
The discourses presented here also show how readings of certain media contents (in this
case satellite TV) influence how other kinds of media (in this case Swedish news) are
interpreted. Such comparative aspects are valuable, because they provide the viewers’
perspectives and perhaps understandings of how news media are working. Some
informants stressed the importance of channels such as Al-Jazeera, which they often
trusted, but some were skeptical about news reporting in general. Thus, news programs
from satellite channels were not always respected. There were sometimes critical
comments about too much violence and that reports from the home country could be
stressful. In this way, views about news reporting also implied some emotional
ambivalence. One struggle with a desire to be an informed citizen, yet one also feels
tension and stress when confronted with media reports containing violent content from
the former home country.
In his discussion on how viewers attach different meanings to fiction genres (e.g., soaps)
and television news, where the former “feels” closer to a person’s daily life compared to
remote events taking place far away in the world, Morley (1999) differentiated between
the world and the television world. He wrote (1999: 141): “This is to suggest that many
viewers watch television news with the premise that it is describing some distant, other
world (decisively not where they live) —a world disconnected from their familiar
everyday logic: a ‘television world’ or environment with its own ‘facts of life’, its own
personnel (the Pope, Madonna, the President, Yasser Arafat), who we will never meet. It
is a separate world (a parallel universe?) with its own forms of dramatic hazard
(volcanoes, earthquakes, floods) […]”. However, Morley’s perspective seems to be an
expression of a kind of Euro-centrism and does not hold for a multicultural society. For in
this particular case, television news was about the informants’ homelands, homes and
families. It was about places and people of which they had a memory and with which
they had a personal history. Thus, the distinction made by Morley is too simple and fails
to grasp the wide range of cultural lenses through which television is watched and how
various genres might be interpreted by their audiences.
Integration is a key word in the Swedish official and public discourse about migration
and refugee policy, which in the true sense of the word implies adaptation to Swedish
society, and its norms and values (Hellgren, 2008). But if we take a multi-cultural
perspective, Hellgren claims, the transformation of Swedish society should be geared to a
“ […] a project of mutual integration, in which the ethnic majority and various ethnic
minority groups collaborate and together construct a common social community” (our
translation, p. 81). According to the informants, the media’s discursive power is strong in
maintaining exclusion and symbolic segregation rather than being inclusive and
20
promoting mutual understanding. The question to be asked here is: Who has the
preferential right of interpretation in the media, and why?
Notes
Full title: Media Practices in the new country. Children, Youth, Family and Ethnicity. The project is
funded by the Swedish Research Council (2004-2006).
2
In the project ’Media practices in the new country’ the word immigrant is only used when being uttered by
other researchers or the informants in the project.
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